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The first day of Lent, I almost made it without Facebook. Actually, my only mistake was first thing in the morning. It’s my habit to check a few news websites on my phone and then look at FaceBook before I start work.

I automatically opened up FB and then stopped myself. Oops. It’s Lent! I quickly clicked out of it and haven’t been tempted to see what my FB friends are posting since. When I’m at the PAC 12 Swimming Championships, I’ll want to see what my daughter’s team is posting. I’ll miss all the fun pictures that will be shared by the kids and parents, too. Rest assured they will all be there after Easter and I can check them out then.

I went to noon Ash Wednesday service at St. Theresa’s and it was short and sweet–less than half an hour. The pastor said it was his “quick get back to work service.” He had a few ideas to make Lent more meaningful. He said the objective is to become a different person than when you started the 40 days and 40 nights Lenten season.

He said we should break Lent into weeks and gave the following suggestions:

WEEK ONE
Spend time alone and listen to the Lord. Give yourself 15 to 30 minutes all to yourself each day to reflect and meditate.

WEEK TWO
Reflect on the Lord’s Prayer daily and think about how it relates to you. Also, create your own prayer.

WEEK THREE
Give something away. Give a gift that you’ve been meaning to give. Give something you own away to someone, who could even be an enemy.

WEEK FOUR
Volunteer in the community. Find an organization and give your service to others.

WEEK FIVE UNTIL EASTER
Look in the mirror and observe and reflect on how you have changed as a person through this Lenten season.

I think that’s an interesting suggestion and helpful to have some structure and do things like giving back to our community rather than “I’m giving up chocolate.” When my daughter was in grade school she’d say, “I”m giving up piano lessons for Lent.” She hated piano and admonishes me today for making her stick with it way beyond what was useful to me or her! In contrast, my son loved it and took lessons from age five through his senior year of high school and should probably still be taking lessons today! It’s funny how different personalities are, isn’t it?

One of my daughter’s good friends from her club swim team gives up social media each year for Lent. I’ve been reading all these stories about how Facebook is causing stress and anxiety in young people, and I applaud this friend for taking a break each year.

I mentioned to both my kids that I thought I should give up social media for Lent as well. Their overwhelming response was “Great!: and “Thank goodness!” I have decided to give up Facebook because I am beginning to believe that if social media is causing young people distress, is it that good for us older folks? I’m going to continue to blog and my posts show up automatically on FB, and I will continue with that. But, I’m going to make a conscious effort to really connect with my friends live. I’m going to call and talk, visit in person and hey—one of my favorite things—go out to lunch!

It’s going to be an interesting experiment and I’ll let you know how it goes. Perhaps it will free up more time for my writing! I mentioned to my daughter that I still want to use Twitter because it’s where I get my news. I like to see what’s “trending.” She’s telling me that if I give up social media, I need to go all the way!

I’m a convert to Catholicism and I really knew very little about the faith and I had no clue what Lent was until I took a nine-month course called Right of Christian Initiation of Adults (RCIA). I did this after my son was born and before I had my daughter. My husband and I wanted to raise our kids with religion, but he was Catholic while I was Protestant. We visited several churches to see where we felt at home. I believed we needed to be on the same page if we were going to raise our kids with religion, so I signed up for RCIA. I was totally moved by our former pastor and the church we decided to join.

Exactly what is Lent? I found an article called “When does Lent 2018 start? Key dates, how long it lasts and the meaning behind the Christian tradition” that explains it pretty well on the mirror.com. Here are the basic facts:

Here’s everything you need to know about the beginning of Lent, when it ends, Christian prayers and fasting as the tradition is marked between Ash Wednesday and Easter Sunday

When does Lent begin?

For Western churches Lent begins every year on Ash Wednesday, the day after Shrove Tuesday .

This year it begins on February 14.

The date varies from year to year, starting in either late February or early March.

However, for Eastern Orthodox churches it begins on Clean Monday (February 19 this year), two days before Western churches.
What is Lent?
Lent takes place every year in the 40 days leading up to Easter, and is treated as a period of reflection and a time for fasting from food and festivities.

It symbolises the days which lead up to Jesus’ crucifixion and subsequent resurrection, when Christ spent 40 days and nights alone in the Judaean Desert being tempted by Satan.

Have you read the stories about people paying for fake Twitter followers? Doesn’t that sound sad to pay for “friends?” Apparently many celebs, famous people do it as well as everyday folks. Somehow upping their numbers in followers makes them feel secure or more popular?

I was talking to my daughter this morning about social media and she told me she has real-life friends that obsess over Instagram. They work to have a perfect image and the photos she sent me of them are so ridiculous. Perfect make-up, poses, backgrounds. It looks like an incredible amount of time and effort went into these pictures. And I know these girls and in real life–they barely resemble the image they are promoting. I don’t get it.

I’m so thankful we didn’t have social media when I was a kid. It was nice to have a break from your “public image” and lounge around in my bedroom or in front of the TV and not worry about what everyone else was doing. There was social pressure to fit in and be popular when I was in junior high and high school. That was enough in itself without having to keep up appearances on Facebook and Instagram. I wonder how many kids today are resorting to fake followers or obsessing over their social media image?

Here’s an excerpt from “Paying to be popular: inside social media’s black market for fake followers” by Nicholas Confessore, Gabriel J.X. Dance, Richard Harris and Mark Hansen that appeared in the New York Times and Seattle Times:

“The real Jessica Rychly is a Minnesota teenager with a broad smile and wavy hair. She likes reading and the rapper Post Malone. When she goes on Facebook or Twitter, she sometimes muses about being bored or trades jokes with friends.

But on Twitter, there is a version of Jessica that none of her friends or family would recognize. While the two Jessicas share a name, photograph and whimsical bio, the other Jessica promoted accounts hawking Canadian real-estate investments, cryptocurrency and a radio station in Ghana. The fake Jessica followed or retweeted accounts using Arabic and Indonesian, languages the real Jessica does not speak. While she was a 17-year-old high-school senior, her fake counterpart frequently promoted pornography.

All these accounts belong to customers of an obscure U.S. company named Devumi that has collected millions of dollars in a shadowy global marketplace for social-media fraud. Devumi sells Twitter followers and retweets to anyone who wants to appear more popular or exert influence online. Drawing on an estimated stock of at least 3.5 million automated accounts, each sold many times over, the company has provided customers with more than 200 million Twitter followers, a New York Times investigation found.

Several Devumi customers acknowledged that they bought bots because their careers had come to depend, in part, on the appearance of social-media influence. “No one will take you seriously if you don’t have a noteworthy presence,” said Jason Schenker, an economist who specializes in economic forecasting and has purchased at least 260,000 followers.

More than 100 self-described influencers — whose market value is even more directly linked to their follower counts on social media — have purchased Twitter followers from Devumi.

After reading countless articles of how social media is adding to our children’s stress, anxiety and depression, I’m beginning to think of it as more evil than good. Yes, I’ve enjoyed reuniting with friends I’ve lost touch with. Yes, I like the updates from my second cousin about her chemo treatments. Other than that, I think I might be happier without it. I used to get birthday phone calls each year and look forward to talking to my friends who bothered to call. Nowadays, I get a string of “happy birthdays” on Facebook. It’s not the same thing. I think we avoid talking and interacting in person, thanks to social media. It’s so much easier to text or PM rather than the give and take, patience and time, an actual phone call can take. I find I don’t like talking on the phone as much as I used to, and I often am the one to end the call first.

I pity the people who feel they have to have “followers” and buy friends. Especially if they feel their success depends upon it. I worry about this extra persona our children feel the need to create.

I’ve enjoyed Facebook to brag about my kids, reconnect with old friends and find out what they’re up to in their lives. In so many ways, Facebook can be a positive for us as individuals and society as a whole. As a Facebook user, I have moments when it makes me feel really good. Like when I reconnected with my best friend who I was rude to in junior high when I wanted to hang out with the cool kids. I hurt her feelings and I have never forgiven myself. Finally, I could apologize after all these years and continue our friendship—even if it’s only looking at each other’s photos of kids and travels.

But, now even Facebook admits that passively surfing through their website can make you feel sad. We know that perusing through glamour photos of our friends, looking at smiling faces of parties you’re not being invited to, or luxury exotic vacations can make you feel a little blue.

That’s why I found the article from Farad Manjoo this past week in the New York Times interesting. Here are the opening paragraphs from “Facebook Conceded It Might Make You Feel Bad. Here’s How to Interpret That:”

Facebook published a quietly groundbreaking admission on Friday. Social media, the company said in a blog post, can often make you feel good — but sometimes it can also make you feel bad.

Yes, I should have warned you to sit down first.

This is one of those stories where what’s being said isn’t as surprising as who’s saying it. Facebook’s using a corporate blog post to point to independent research that shows its product can sometimes lead to lower measures of physical and mental well-being should be regarded as a big deal. The post stands as a direct affront to the company’s reason for being; it’s as if Nike asked whether just doing it may not be the wisest life goal after all, or if Snapple conceded it wasn’t quite positive that it really was the best stuff on earth.

Consider Facebook’s place in the social-media firmament. Facebook — which also owns Facebook Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp — is the world’s largest and most profitable social media company. Its business model and its more airy social mission depend on the idea that social media is a new and permanently dominant force in the human condition.

So far, that idea has proved unwavering. Facebook’s leap into the ranks of the world’s most valuable companies less than 14 years after its founding can be attributed to this simple truth: Humans have shown no limit, so far, in their appetite for more Facebook.

But what if all that Facebook is not good for us? For several years, people have asked whether social media, on an individual level and globally, might be altering society and psychology in negative ways. Until about a year or so ago, Facebook’s public posture about its product had been overwhelmingly positive, as you’d expect. Facebook, Facebook insisted, was clearly good for the world.

Then came 2017. The concerns over social-media-born misinformation and propaganda during last year’s presidential race were one flavor of this worry. Another is what Facebook might be doing to our psychology and social relationships — whether it has addicted us to “short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops” that “are destroying how society works,” to quote Chamath Palihapitiya, one of several former Facebook executives who have expressed some version of this concern over the last few months.

Mr. Palihapitiya, who is now a venture capitalist, made those comments during a talk at Stanford University last month; after the comments were widely reported this week, he walked them back. But his fears have been echoed across Silicon Valley and lately have become something like a meme: What if Facebook is rotting our brains?

This gets to why an otherwise in-the-weeds blog post from Facebook’s research team is so interesting. Though it is quite abstruse, the post, by David Ginsberg and Moira Burke, two company researchers, takes readers through a tour of the nuances on whether Facebook can be bad for you.

In Psychology Today, March 2016, Amy Morin wrote: “Science Explains How Facebook Makes You Sad And why you keep using it anyway.” Here’s an excerpt from her story, but if you read all of it you’ll learn that just being aware that Facebook can make you feel sad, can help you.

More than one billion people log into Facebook every day. Whether their intention is to post a duck face selfie, or they want to read the headlines from their favorite news outlet, Facebook remains the world’s most popular social networking site.

Of course, it would seem logical to assume that people use Facebook because it somehow enhances their lives. But oddly, research suggests the opposite. Studies show Facebook use is associated with lower life satisfaction.

Wasting Time on Facebook Will Make You Sad
According to a 2014 study published in Computers in Human Behavior, most people aren’t using social media to be social. Only about 9 percent of Facebook’s users’ activities involve communicating with others.

Instead, most users consume random pieces of content. And researchers found that passively consuming information isn’t fulfilling or satisfying.

Study participants experienced a sharp decline in their moods after scrolling through Facebook. Interestingly, they didn’t experience the same emotional decline when they surfed the internet. The toll on mental health was unique to Facebook.

Through a series of studies, researchers concluded that by the time people log out of Facebook, they feel like they’ve wasted their time. Their remorse over being unproductive causes them to feel sad.

I would have posted this pic of my kids on FB if it was around at the time.

What are your thoughts about social media and Facebook? Do you use it and how does it make you feel?

We parents relentlessly post pics of our kids on Facebook and Instagram. We post pictures of our food. And yes, our dogs and cats. Do you take a look at your kids FB pages? I’ve noticed they are rarely used in my family. Kids are “snapchatting away,” something I have no clue about. I notice my daughter looking at her phone, typing hectically away and then laughing. I ask her what she’s doing. “Shapchat,” is invariably the answer. It’s a group thing, friend thing, a thing she does every day. Facebook is used to memorialize the big events in her life while Snapchat is a tool to communicate daily.

In the article “Facebook may have a grown-up problem: Young people leaving for Instagram and Snapchat” writer Jessica Guynn spells out the numbers:

SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook will see a decline among teenagers in the U.S. this year, says market research firm eMarketer.

EMarketer predicts 14.5 million people ages 12 to 17 will use Facebook in 2017, a decline of 3.4% from the previous year, as they migrate to Snap’s Snapchat and Facebook’s Instagram.

Monthly Facebook usage among those under 12 and ages 18 to 24 will grow more slowly than previously forecast, too, according to eMarketer.

The forecast suggests young people are turning away from the world’s most populous social network, which reached 2 billion users this year.

You may wonder what the big deal is about kids not using Facebook as their main source of so dial media. It means advertisers aren’t getting the clicks they want, nor will they in the future. Kids who are growing up preferring other social media aren’t all of a sudden going to become FB junkies when they’re adults.

The article continues:

“What’s more: There are now “Facebook nevers,” children becoming tweens who are skipping Facebook altogether.

Snapchat usage is expected to increase this year, with the U.S. user base to grow 5.8% to 79.2 million monthly. EMarketer increased growth projections for all age groups except the oldest, with the biggest jump in young adults, ages 18 to 24 increasing nearly 20%.

Similarly, monthly Instagram usage in the U.S. will grow 23.8% in 2017 to 85.5 million. Within that figure, Instagram will expand its user base among those under 12 years old by 19% and those ages 12 to 17 by 8.8%.

I post pictures from my morning walks on Insta and FB.

In a contrary article called “Are Young People Leaving Facebook: Not Even Close” you’ll read the opposite. This was written by Kurt Wagner and is dated March 30, 2016:

“There has been a general perception over the past few years that millennials are abandoning Facebook in search of greener, less parent-friendly pastures like Snapchat and Instagram.

Not. Even. Close.

A new comScore report released Wednesday highlights data on a whole range of Internet trends. Included in the report was this chart, which shows the percentage of 18- to 34-year-old Internet users who frequent each major social network each month. It also shows how much time those users spend with each service.”

What do you see with your own kids? Do they use Facebook as much as Instagram or Snapchat? What other types of social media do they use? Do you check on what they post?

Every day there are articles about social media and how it affects our children. I see the issue when kids sit next to each other, not talking, but texting or posting. My own daughter got in trouble with her coach for inappropriate texts when she was in high school. I feel like social media can be a landmine for our children. What can we do as parents to help them avoid the problems and pitfalls?

In the Washington Post’s article “5 ways parents can help kids balance social media with the real world,” the author Adrienne Wichard-Edds, gives practical advice on what to do about the constant presence and temptation of smartphones and kids.

“According to a 2015 report from Common Sense Media, teens spend an average of nine hours a day consuming online entertainment.

“We’re having the wrong conversations with our kids around social media,” she says. “When we focus on fear and judgment — when we say ‘don’t do that because you’ll get in trouble,’ or ‘if you do that, you won’t get into college’ — kids will just go underground and find other ways to hide their online interactions.”

We all want our kids to be in the real world and spend less time online. But, what can we do about it? I’ve heard people argue that social media is fine and it’s a new way of communicating. My parents were annoyed with my brother and me who talked on the phone with our best friends for hours. My parents said more than once, “Why don’t you go over to their house, or have them over?” Kids no longer are attached to a long cord hooked to the wall but are posting and texting instead.

Here are five tips discussed in the article:

ONE
“Check your kid’s phone. “Particularly in middle school but also in high school, kids should know that parents can ask for their phones at any point and be allowed full access,” Homayoun says.

TWO
“Be app-savvy. “If your kid is on it, you should be, too,” Homayoun says of apps and social media platforms. “You don’t have to have an account, but at least try it out so you can have informed conversations about it. If your kids know that you understand the social media they’re using, they’re more likely to come to you to talk about issues that pop up.”

THREE
“Help kids understand their “why.” Inspire kids to act out of internal motivation instead of fear, Homayoun says, by helping them build their own filter. “Encourage your kids to ask themselves ‘Why am I picking up my phone? Am I bored, am I lonely, am I sad? Am I just uncomfortable because I’m in a room where I don’t know anyone?’

FOUR
“Set clear ground rules. Talk to your kids about appropriate social media use before you give them a phone or allow them to download a new app, says Homayoun.

FIVE
“Create opportunities for digital detox. “Give kids a budget to plan their own screen-free adventures — don’t just say, ‘Okay, kids, get offline and come do some chores,’ ” Homayoun says. She also points out that kids need to learn how to be okay with being offline.”

I’m curious about how other families deal with social media. My kids are older and I was the mom who said “no” to MySpace, Facebook etc. My kids had prepaid flip phones and their big thrill was to get one with a camera. Also, very few kids back then had access to smartphones. It was a big discussion with fellow parents about what age kids should have them. Now, they are part of our daily lives and I bet more kids have them than not.

What are your strategies for dealing with social media and younger kids?

I had a pink phone like this in my bedroom and talked to my friends for hours.

My daughter and I walked into an elevator yesterday at Nordstrom’s with a mom pushing a Thule baby stroller, snapping pics of her infant and tapping away on her phone to post the pics. My daughter whispered to me, “Thank God they didn’t have iPhones when I was a kid!”

I told her I was thankful that their early childhood was before the era of smartphones, too.

Later, I asked her why she was glad we didn’t have iPhones. Her answer surprised me. “Because you would have been taking photos constantly and posting every moment of my life on FaceBook,” she said.

Psychologists warn about kids spending too much time in front of screens and not enough of their time outdoors in an article in the DailyMail.com called “Why children should not be selfie stars:”

In advice to parents, Dr. Godsi said: ‘Leave technology at home. When you go out as a family leave mobile devices switched off and have a rule that says no mobile phones during family meal times.’

The author added: ‘In my opinion selfies should not be encouraged.

‘I think there is a place for taking a few photos, as a way to help families remember or look back and to share memories but the constant pressure to post on social media means there’s a risk that they (children) don’t experience anything except through a lens.’

My daughter said that once I got my first iPhone and was learning how to use it, “You relentlessly posted ugly, fat pictures of me on FaceBook.”

I view those photos not as ugly, but on a scale of cute to adorable to gorgeous.

Learning about the ocean in Junior Lifeguards.

I explained that I was so glad she and her brother weren’t posing for pictures constantly, weren’t worried about what other kids were doing at the moment, but went outside to play. That’s why I’m glad the iPhone wasn’t a thing in their early years.

When we had kids over, they weren’t sitting side by side texting each other. No, they were running around the backyard and house playing a reverse hide-and-seek game called sardines—for hours on end.

When we were at the beach, they were jumping in the waves, body surfing, building drip castles, digging holes and yes—occasionally fighting and throwing sand. As annoying and painful as throwing sand was–especially dealing with sand in the eyes–it sure beats constantly posing for pictures.

My daughter says there is room for both. When she goes to the beach with friends, they now get a few pics, then toss the phones in a beach bag and dive under the waves.

Here are a few frightening stats from the article in the UK Mail:

Dr. Godsi spoke out after a survey of 2,000 parents by outdoor education provider, Kingswood, found that the biggest source of quality time among families is spent watching TV together. Sixty-eight percent cited this as their main activity shared with children, followed by going to the cinema (35 per cent) and playing computer games (24 per cent).

The average age of the parents’ children was ten, while 445 were seven.

Asked to look back to when all their youngsters were seven, 85 percent of families said their sons or daughters had never gone camping.

Sixty-five percent said they had never played pooh sticks or climbed a tree (51 percent).

Forty-one per cent admitted their children had never been on a bike ride, paddled in the sea (43 percent) or played in a park (31 percent).

It’s very easy to get sedentary. It’s also easy not to talk to each other when we’re buried and focused on our screens. I’m lucky to spend this week with my daughter just hanging out and being with eachother.

What are your thoughts about selfies, kids and family time? Do your kids spend enough time without their phones experiencing outdoors?